I'm about ready to give up on this thing. I've tried everything that's been suggested in any of the forum posts and more to get it to work. I'm still getting failures to load or unload despite the dang near perfect tip shape and decent tension on the bearings. I've replaced parts on both the printer and the chameleon and still can't get any kind of consistency. For every print that I've had success I've had 10 or more failures at various stages of the print. I'm honestly starting to think that this thing doesn't have any kind of reliability to it. I ordered the mk3 upgrade but I'm honestly doubting that will actually do anything to decrease the chances of failure.
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Constant failure regardless of how ideal settings and equipment are.
Constant failure regardless of how ideal settings and equipment are.
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Just out of curiosity is this ever going to be resolved or am I waiting on fixes that will never happen?
Address is correct but I don't want you to feel obligated to replace it. Could have just as easily been something I messed up somehow. All I know is it jams even on a known to work system. I would much rather pay for the y and a replacement for the bearing holder if a file isn't available(pretty sure I caused the stress crack in that part myself while trying to give the gears more tension in order to force the filament through the y). I'll gladly send this one back so you can poke at it though so that if the problem was caused by something I did or didn't do then that can be addressed and corrected.
So... do you have the Mk2? If so, the Mk3 (you said you ordered the parts) is a tremendous upgrade over the Mk2 in terms of shear power available. You can even adjust it's tension to suit your needs by printing the tension bearing sliders with varying spring preloads as well as bearing distances. This alone makes the Mk3 a million times better. With that said, the Mk2 had a little weakness in the design that might be contributing to the issues you're seeing if you're not aware of it... do you hear a clicking at all when it's trying to load a color? If so, check to make sure the "flexure" hasn't broken in the B parts... they can be damaged easily and you'll wind up without any tension at all being applied. The Mk3 actually has no flexure to break and relies on a totally different design to handle tension. If yours is broken, you can easily print a new replacement (from here: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5181728) until your new Mk3 parts arrive. The other thing I'd check is that your extruder can actually load and unload without any assistance... for example... remove the Y adapter and feed filament into the extruder (without pressing it in... just let it touch the drive gears)... then run it forward... does it load? If not, then the tension is too tight still. As for unloading, check the same thing... the extruder should be pushing out the filament all the way before the 3D Chameleon even runs... so the filament should be free (so free that the filament can actually fall out without needing any help.)... that way the 3D Chameleon isn't fighting anything. In both cases, the idea is that the 3D Chameleon isn't trying to do the work... the extruder should already be capable of doing both of these. (If it's the first issue, then adjust the tension to a lower value... if it's the second, then increase your filament retraction distance to make sure it is let go from the stock extruder before the 3D Chameleon presses the button to retract it.) Any videos and pictures you can get of it having an issue will always help me diagnose it. Bill